Tinnitus: noises in the ears simply hum away
All content is checked by medical journalists.MunichFor many sufferers, tinnitus is more than a nuisance - the phantom sound in the ear drives some people crazy. Music therapy can help, in which the patient hums his personal tinnitus tone and thus readjusts the sound processing in the brain. It works within a few days.
Tinnitus occurs in the brain. It develops when the patient can no longer hear a certain sound frequency, for example due to partial hearing loss. The brain registers that the tone is missing in the listening repertoire and, as it were, turns the control higher and higher in search of it. "The result can be feedback that is perceived as phantom noise," explains Christoph Krick from the University of Homburg.
Music therapy for the brain
Effective help is apparently provided by neural music therapy, which is supposed to reverse the dysfunction of the brain. With their help, annoying noises in the ear can literally "hum away".
As part of the treatment, patients hum or sing their personal tinnitone tone - usually in a lower octave. “In this way, they can reconstruct the missing sound in the brain,” says neuroscientist Krick. It is comparable to a piano on which you strike a certain note. Even then, the corresponding overtones and undertones automatically resonate.
In addition, the 61 study participants received relaxation training - because stress increases the noises in the ears. After this treatment, 80 percent of the patients no longer found the tinnitus to be excruciating, in eight percent it even disappeared completely.
Rebuilt brain hard drive
Krick used a magnetic resonance tomograph (MRI) to examine what happens in their heads. The pictures show that during the music therapy, tissue had built up in those areas of the brain that had previously been reduced due to the disorder. “We were able to prove that after just a few days the brain cells that process the auditory impression grew back. The hard disk of the brain was rebuilt, so to speak, permanently, "says the brain researcher.
The scientists found the strongest effects in patients who also stated in questionnaires that they had benefited in particular from the therapy. The brain structure also changed in a control group with participants without ringing in their ears. With them, the relaxation techniques in particular apparently had an effect: Tissues formed in areas of the brain that are important for dealing with stress and help people to relax.
Lasting effect
"It was gratifying that the therapy was still successful three years after the very short therapy interval," explains Dr. Heike Argstatter, who accompanied the study at the German Center for Music Therapy Research (DZM) in Heidelberg. The learning process has evidently become permanent in the brain "Burned in".
Her colleague Krick, however, doubts that the therapy works on its own. Precise adaptation to the individual frequency of the tinnitus tone is crucial. "So I'm afraid that most people would probably come up against personal limits here," he says in an interview with The scientist hopes, however, that corresponding coaching will soon be offered by other centers. (cf)
Sources:
Press release Saarland University, March 24, 2015
Christoph M. Krick et al: Cortical reorganization in recent-onset tinnitus patients by the Heidelberg Model of Music Therapy; Frontiers in Neuroscience ”, Front. Neurosci., February 19, 2015; doi: 10.3389 / fnins.2015.00049
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